Abstract
While driving its stake into the ground of political economy of language, this paper does two spatiotemporal jumps in order to shed some light on how particular liberal – hence politico-economic – ideologies travel. It first goes back a hundred years ago, to Geneva, and pursues a novel reading of Saussure by delineating his liberal picture of language. It then moves to 2013, in Lima, and looks at some possible consequences of Saussure’s inaugural abandonment of social relationships. In addressing a contemporary scene of humiliation – where young indigenous Peruvian Yaqui Quispe is humiliated by Universidad del Pacifico in its reappraisal of her entrance exam – the paper claims that Saussure’s liberal reified view of social relationships is a fiction that most speakers of the world languages cannot afford. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Highlights
It is a truism that linguistic form bears a close relationship with economic and political formations
Linguistic forms, accents and genres have an economy of their own (IRVINE, 1989; BUCHOLTZ, 2006; HELLER, 2010; BLOMMAERT, 2010)
I address a contemporary scene of humiliation, in which a young indigenous Peruvian, Yaqui Quispe, is humiliated by Universidad del Pacifico in its reappraisal of her entrance exam
Summary
It is a truism that linguistic form bears a close relationship with economic and political formations. 2016 producing subjects: by disregarding their social positioning in the name of “equality” Two, attention to this particular coveted correlation formation of linguistics as a science may help us tackle the problem of how contemporary linguistic and politico-economic regimes, by disguising their liberal formations, legitimize certain social relationships – humiliation, for instance. One, ‘economic transparency’ is the principle whereby Locke imagined that, in its social circulation, words ought to be able to “excite in the hearer exactly the same idea they stand for in the mind of the speaker” (LOCKE, 1680: Book III, Chap IX, §4) This type of mind-reading would only be possible if speakers observed that language, “the great conduit”, serves the purpose of making “known one man’s thoughts and ideas to another”, something that ought to be done “with as much ease and quickness as possible” for the perfect. From Locke’s crafting of his construct, language “could perfectly embody the liberal ideology that purportedly judges individuals on the basis of their own individual actions” (BAUMAN; BRIGGS, 2004, p.59)
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